Dolly had been sick most of the year. In March we dealt with what seemed 100% to be Old Dog Vestibular Syndrome which in the grand scheme of things wasn’t that traumatic and she did indeed get back to normal after 10 days.
But just before Mother’s Day in May, she started with the falling and tripping again. We tried Dramamine again but it didn’t do anything. She stopped wanting to eat dog food, but was good at eating most other food I cooked for her. Chicken, hot dogs, rice. At one point in June she just got…awful. Not acknowledging me, not eating, not doing anything right except drinking and peeing.
I lost my shit. I called the doc. The doc said MRI…I said I can’t afford an MRI (I can’t). She said the best she could do was just throw a ton of antibiotics and steroids at her and see how she responds. By the end of that weekend, she was quite back to normal!! Still dizzy, but back to herself.
July and August she just slowly got worse, day by day. Less control of her walking. We couldn’t do much of anything together anymore. The girl who loved to climb and walk and swim and go for rides couldn’t do any of this anymore. We basically got up, took drugs, went potty, ate, slept, and did it again in 12 hours.
I work from home so I was with her all the time. She no longer wanted to sleep in my room so I slept in the living room with her. Except I would snore on the couch and she didn’t like it! One night I fell asleep there and woke up to find her gone! She had dragged herself to the office so she didn’t have to hear me snore. After that, I made a habit of staying with her until about 2 AM when she was good and asleep, and would sneak off to my bed. One time I went to bed too early and she got up and stood at my door until I came to the living room.
I finally decided to ask my parents to pay for an MRI. While Dolly was a mess physically, she still seemed to be mentally with me. She still begged for food (and dragged herself over to me when I was eating, to the point where I would take all my meals on the floor with her if she’d just stay still.) If I mentioned “a ride” she would still perk up. She still would randomly go to her toy box and pick out a toy and play with it for a few minutes.
Everyone told me “she’ll let you know” but she never let me know. Every night she would seem “bad” to me and I would feel like it was time to let her go. And every morning she would get up and potty and eat and I’d think how it was fine and it was a good day. I could not BEAR to make a call to my vet to make an appointment to have my dog put down. I had no idea how I could ever do that. It was killing me*.
So an MRI would tell me what her prognosis was - whether it was something that could actually be done (the vet told me that was a possibility) or what was wrong and how much time she had left.
We were scheduled for Monday the 8th. My mom had “taken the day off” meaning she didn’t have to babysit my nieces. She was just along for the ride and the credit card. We met the neurologist who said it kinda seemed like Old Dog Vestibular and I said well obviously it’s not or we wouldn’t be here. They seemed really timid about the cost of the MRI - $2400 - but I said I knew, and I needed it done. I gave Dolly hugs and kisses and she went off. And I went home.
I got a call some 3 hours later. The doctor said that she had a massive brain tumor - probably growing before we noticed symptoms in March - and she would not live long. In fact she might be so bad off as to not be able to come out of the anesthesia.
I was relieved. I cry as I write this but I was relieved that it was over. I told the doc not to wake her up. I didn’t want her to go through anything else. I wanted them to leave her asleep, I would come down (a half hour drive) and I would say goodbye. I called my mom, I said “Mommy come get me” through my tears and we went, with my dad, to say goodbye.
Dolly is a beautiful dog. People often stopped me when we were out to tell me what a beautiful girl she is. She is beautiful when she sleeps, too. She looked beautiful and happy and comfortable on that gurney. I held her paw and said goodbye and kissed her and cried over her and then we left, and she was gone.
I had already cried a lot over the summer, while she was sick. I cried a lot that day. And I’ve cried a lot since. But I still feel good. I am so relieved…so relieved I didn’t have to make that call. And relieved that she is better now. I am a religious person so…I am relieved by all that aspect of it too.
I haven’t really “de-dogged” my house but I decided that the next day I had to get rid of the stuff that reminded me of when she was sick. I had to get rid of all the special food stuff I had for her and all the meds. I filled up a huge box and took it down to the local shelter. I moved the extra carpeting I’d put down in the doorways so she didn’t slip. This week I’m working on washing all of the bedding she had around the house. I took some of the toys she didn’t like to the shelter, too.
Two of her three beds are still here. Her favorite toys are still here - nice and pristine since her birthday in April, as I replaced them often for her but this time she didn’t ruin them as she usually did.
I had her cremated. She is in a beautiful wooden box. I also got a paw print in clay, and a lock of her hair.
At first I had thought I wanted to bury the box outside, in a spot in my flower bed where she dug a hole every day. But the second day after she died, there was a storm. Now, Dolly was particularly afraid of storms. Like…off her nut afraid. I’d tried everything over the years and there was no answer. All we could do was brace ourselves and ride through a storm. I cried like a baby that first day it stormed. And I decided that there was absolutely no way I was going to leave my girl outside by herself in a storm. So now her box of ashes is in my bedroom, on the bottom of a lovely little table.
Interesting thing…I got her a pool this summer. When she stopped being able to go to her doggy beach because it was too far of a ride, I wanted her to be able to keep swimming so I got one of those soft-sided pools with an inflatable ring on top to splash around in. I had someone build a deck for it so she could get in. We went in it every day after work, all summer, until she got to be just too sick. And then it sucked trying to take care of it because you kind of need to use it to keep it clear. And then the Sunday before Dolly died I got up and the pool was flat as a pancake. Somewhere something had burst. The pool was done. I spent the evening cleaning up the scene (it was quite a mess actually). The next day, Dolly died. Weird huh?
Anyway, here’s one of the first pics I have of her. I picked her out of her litter in June of 2002, when she was just 7 weeks old. The breeder said I needed to wait and get her at 8 weeks but I said I needed her that day. The breeder said she trusted me to get her final round of shots done and to take care of her like her mommy. I did. I did for 12 years. Here is the last pic I took of her. We laid down in our yard to watch traffic the Friday before she died.
I didn’t get to have a “best last day” with Dolly, because I didn’t know it was coming. But it doesn’t matter. Every day was the best for us, her whole life. We did the best we could all this summer, even. I don’t have any regrets about Dolly’s life. She was, for all intents and purposes, my kid and I treated her like one. She had a great life as a dog and she gave me a great life. She made me whole.
I like to think she was my id - she was beautiful, bossy, bratty, loud-mouthed and spoiled. Everything I am not. As you can imagine, there is a big hole.
It is so awful without her, but I did have 12 years to prepare. I knew it would come. I didn’t know it’d “only” be 12 but…it would be sad on any day.
I will get a new dog. Maybe even 2 this time (Dolly was solidly an only child and acted like it!) But first I need to get the house back in order (I kind of was uber-depressed while she was sick so I haven’t done much around here for 3 months) and I need to have some time to reflect, and have time to devote to a new dog. My new dog won’t be a replacement for Dolly, just a distraction. Hopefully all of the skills she taught me of how to be the best doggy mommy will translate over to the new dog.
Thanks for reading, and even if you didn’t, thanks for caring.
*As an aside, thank you to all the Dopers who have shared their stories about losing their dogs over the years. A few weeks ago, before Dolly died, I sat down with a box of Kleenex and read about your struggles. I had never read most of the threads before because they made me too sad. But I needed to know what to do, and you all helped me. And I was right there with Ike Witt, who was the last to share their story.
